Three divisional champions at this year’s seventh annual Youth Dressage Festival are wrestling with the question of whether to pursue their college educations or their riding goals, and they’ve come to different conclusions.

The Youth Dressage Festival was held in Saugerties, N.Y., on Aug. 12-14.

FEI division champion Liz Austin, 21, of Williston, Vt., should be returning to the University of Vermont this fall, but she’s not. Her victory with her 9-year-old, Dutch Warmblood stallion, Olivier (by Idocus–Rowillie) seemed to confirm what many have told Austin–that she’s got a horse with world-class potential.

She’s decided to take off the fall semester to train with Lendon Gray, the festival’s creator.

“The feeling is that he can do Grand Prix next year, so I’m going to use this time to confirm some of the movements and get him on track,” said Austin. “If he has the ability, then I feel I should do him justice and take time for this. So my life is up in the air right now.”

It’s not the first time Austin has taken time off from college for her riding. She skipped the spring 2004 semester to spend the winter in Florida training with Jennifer Baumert.

Dressage found Austin early in life. Her mother, Madeleine, is a dressage trainer and instructor who runs the family farm. Liz competed in her first recognized dressage competition at age 7 on a pony named Warlock–and won it.

She leased her first full-sized horse at 10, a horse who’d tried eventing but had failed miserably in the dressage phase. They were last in their first show.

“I mean, dead last,” Liz recalled. “He screamed his head off the whole time. I think our scores were in the low 40s.

“But, for whatever reason, I persisted with him, even though my mom tried to get me to give him back to the people I was leasing him from.”

The reason may be that Liz has the sort of personality that only works harder when someone tells her she can’t achieve something.

She believes that horse–a mixture of Trakehner, Arabian, Quarter Horse and Morgan named American Pie–taught her important lessons. “He wasn’t some fancy, super horse, but he really taught me how to ride and to be persistent,” she said.

In contrast, Austin said she knew that her current mount, the 17-hand Olivier, was special from the start. The horse had only been shown six times before the Youth Dressage Festival and never at the FEI level. In fact, Olivier hadn’t been to a show since the summer of 2004.

Despite her relatively limited show experience, compared to other young riders, Gray said that Austin is “as good a rider as you’re going to find at that level, and I’d put her up against anyone.”

Austin’s victories when she does show seem to prove Gray right. She won last year’s FEI division at the Youth Dressage Festival aboard Hierarch, a Dutch Warmblood stallion owned by Joop van Uytert of Denmark. And, also with Hierarch, she won the individual silver medal at the 2004 North American Young Riders Championships.

As for finishing her last three semesters of college, Austin said, “My mom’s sure,” meaning that the pressure will be on to go back. She’s pursuing a small-business major with a focus on agriculture, hoping to eventually run her own “small, honest horse business.”

“I’d like to be able to do the majority of the care and riding myself,” Austin said.

Gray believes that Austin should be able to do that and more. “Liz has a god-given talent, and she’s a worker. She’s always cheerful, positive and very responsible. I’d have no fear of walking away from my stables and leaving everything in her hands,” she said.

No Distractions

Katherine Norkus, the FEI pony division and third level champion, just graduated from high school, and she too has college on hold. But not because she wants a year off to ride; she wants to publish a paper based on her past three years of research.

Norkus, of Pleasant Valley, N.Y., is only 18.

Her three-year research program studied “the transport of nutrients from mother to child, and now I want the time to write up the data without the distraction of college,” she said. “Publications are the key to a good medical school.”

Norkus, who has a one-year deferment from Fordham University (N.Y.), is clearly a person who thinks everything through, and her intellectual, analytical approach to life is what she said makes dressage such a good fit for her.

“I’m very tedious; I’m a perfectionist,” she admitted introspectively. “Dressage has the same aspects: You start with training level, and you build on that and move up step by step.”

Norkus started riding hunters at age 7. Her dressage trainer, Brandi Rizera, was once a trainer at Gray’s barn. More recently, Norkus began training with Gray too.

Her partner at the festival was Tigger, an 11-year-old Arabian-Welsh-cross she’s leased through the summer. The gelding stands at 14.1 hands; Norkus is 5’3″.

“I’m small enough to get away with riding a pony, but since I have long legs, I can ride the horses,” she explained.

And she won the third level championship on her 16.3-hand, Dutch Warmblood gelding, Nobility, 10. She purchased him in Florida in April 2004.

Back-Up Plan

“Pragmatic” is the approach Courtney Willett, the training level champion for the 15-21 division, used to answer the riding-vs.-college question. She attends Edinboro University (Pa.), not because she really wants to work in the health-care industry, but because she wants a back-up plan.

“I really want to train and ride. College is in case I can’t get anything going,” she said.

A resident of Waterford, Pa., Willett spends her days giving riding lessons and training horses when not at college.

Willett is really an event rider, but once a week she travels two hours to Ohio to train with dressage instructor Charlotte Bailey.

“My mare is a great jumper, but her dressage was something else. I knew we had to improve that in order to move up in eventing,” she said.

The victory at the Youth Dressage Festival made clear to Willett that her 6-year-old, Thoroughbred mare, Diamond Alexis, has definitely gotten better.

Although her focus is still eventing, Willett now understands what makes dressage so attractive to many.

“Once you get that feeling of lightness and roundness and impulsion, it’s just incredible,” she said. That’s why she hopes she’ll never really need that degree in health care.

A Pint-Sized Pair

The Star Wars character Yoda always maintained, “Size matters not.” And his prophecy came true when a tiny 11-year-old who trains Miniature Horses went home the champion at the Youth Dressage Festival.

Riding Windchime, a pony she got in a trade, Rachel Chowanec outperformed riders nearly twice her age and double her weight to claim the coveted high-score champion trophy, a new saddle, a cooler and an assortment of other victory items.

The win astonished Chowanec, who weighs only 58 pounds and stands a little over 4 feet tall, because of her 12.3-hand pony’s lack of show experience.

“This is Windchime’s first year showing. We only did a couple of schooling shows before this,” she said. The competition consists of three categories: Chowanec scored a 95 on the written test, a 95 on equitation, and a 69 percent at training level, test 4. She’s planning to show more regularly next year at first level with Windchime.

Chowanec, of Columbia, Conn., credited her win to her pony, to her trainers, and to the fact that “I’ve been riding since I was born.” Her mother, Chandra, is a riding instructor at the family’s Newberry Farm. Chandra home-schools her daughter, so she teaches her daughter about much more than riding.

But Rachael also works with Lendon Gray, “as often as possible.” Rachel said she especially likes Gray’s honest approach to teaching.

“If it’s not good, she tells you, and if it is good, she tells you that too,” said Rachel.

The feelings of admiration between Rachel and Gray are mutual.

Rachel started taking lessons with Gray at age 7. By 8, she was spending a few days at a time living with Gray as a working student.

“She was up and at the stable by 7 a.m., and she wouldn’t get home until 6:30 or so with the rest of us,” Gray said. “She is a worker. She’s an amazing child.”

Rachel has already broken and trained several Miniature Horses to earn money. And she’s a veteran of the Youth Dressage Festival. At 9, she was the training level champion for her age group.

If her success with Windchime, a Connemara-Welsh-cross, is any measure of her ability as a trainer, then she has a promising future ahead of her.

“When I first saw her ride Windchime, she was a handful,” Gray said. “That pony would take off bucking. She was a mean little pony, but Rachel rode through it.”

Why? “She’s one of the most determined little people you’ll ever find,” Gray said. “And she’s gutsy. I’ve seen her get into some really tough situations, and she’ll just grit her teeth and put her buns down in the saddle and ride on.”